Sam Altman: “The good founders are people who have ideas all the time”

“You can give a founder an idea and they can start a company. The problem is they need to come up with new ideas for the company basically every week. You have to come up with crazy new ideas and big changes all the time.”

When Sam was at Y Combinator, they tried an experiment where they funded 20 teams of strong founders that didn’t have ideas but were otherwise really good. They all failed.

“What we learned is that the good founders are people who have ideas all the time. There’s an intelligence component to this. There’s a creativity component to this. There’s an ability to think independent thoughts component to this. But whatever you want to call this - this particular kind of intelligence that leads to seeing problems in different ways and thinking of ideas that don’t yet exist but should - you’ve got to have that in a founder.”

Full video: Y Combinator “Sam Altman - Startup Investor School Day 1“ (Mar 2018)

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Sam Altman insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Sam Altman"